“I Must Have Died …”: Post-Mortem Speech in the Uncanny Tales of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Harriet Prescott Spofford

Interesting point that most ghost stories do grant a voice to the dead; the focus in the stories is on the feelings and actions of the living.

Downey begins with Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

“Death is dumb as life is deaf”- wonderful end of a short story.

“The Amber Gods” by Harriet Prescott Spofford. Downey praises the narrative voice of this short story.

In both texts, the dead women experience a freeing sensation post-mortem and the idea of time being stopped for the dead female narrators whilst continuing for the living, is an interesting shared theme.

However, though Phelps’ character eventually goes on to leave the earth, Spofford’s character does not.

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About livesinliminalspaces

I am a PhD candidate in the School of English, whose research focuses on the effect the urban environment and the cityscape has on the behaviour of marginalised characters in the novels from the Twentieth Century.